Grischuk leads after first day of Astana World Blitz Championship

7/9/2012 – Alexander Grischuk was on fire, winning eight games, drawing five and losing two to take the lead with 10.5/15, a full point ahead of the second placed Dmitry Andreikin, Vassily Ivanchuk and Sergey Karjakin, with Magnus Carlsen following a point behind these three. Tuesday is the return round of this double round robin. We have lots of pictures and video for you to relive the action.

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World
blitz and rapid chess championship

The Official World Blitz and Rapid Chess Championships are being held from
July 1-11, 2012, in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. It is worth noting
that the Rapid Chess Championship is a first in the history of FIDE! The top
ten players of the current FIDE rating list have the right to take part in the
championships. The total prize fund is US $400,000. Qualifiers are held prior
to the finals, with three winners taking part in the finals. In addition two
Kazakhstani grandmasters were nominated: Pavel Kotsur and Rinat Dzhumabayev
in blitz. Tiebreak rules for first place: (a) results between the players involved;
(b) number of wins; (c) Sonneborn-Berger score; (d) Sudden death game: 5 min
vs 4 min.

First day blitz

Nikolai Chadaev, rated 2605, who qualified for the blitz, is in place seven

Favourite to win: Magnus Carlsen took four losses and is in fifth place

Bulgarian GM Veselin Topalov with 5.5/15 on place thirteen

Alexander Grischuk vs Teimour Radjabov in round four: 1-0 in 53 moves

Alexander Morozevich, rated 2770, with 8.0/15 in place six

Moldovan GM Viktor Bologan with 5.0/15 in second last place

Vietnamese super-talent Le Quang Liem with 7.0/15 in place 12

The audience at the Blitz World Championship in Astana

Two interesting spectators at the Blitz World Championship

Video stream

You can watch the live stream as it was recorded during the first day of the
Blitz. Each of the videos is 50 minutes long. The first gives you visual impression
of the players in action (unfortunately sometimes with the table flags obscuring
the view of the board). In the second you can follow the moves, with commentary
by GM Robert Fountaine and Geoffrey Borg:

In general the two videos are synchronised, so you should start them and let
both run together.

Standings after fifteen rounds of play

Remaining program

Links

The games of the Finals will be broadcast live on the official web site
and on the chess server Playchess.com.
If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there
and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase
11 or any of our Fritz
compatible chess programs.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!

Enjoy the best moments of recent top tournaments (World Cup, Isle of Man Open) with analysis of top players. In addition you'll get lots of training material. For example 10 new suggestions for your opening repertoire.